Mailbag #179

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In [Mailbag #177] you inferred the best way to learn magic is to grab some older books (Scarne and the Fulves books) and work your way through them. While I understand the point you were trying to make and that that feels like a good way to learn, I think you might be being blinded by the typical “in my day!” thinking.

If learning from books is such a great way to learn, why are young magicians now so much better than they’ve ever been before?  —KS

Well, first, I didn’t say that’s the best way to learn. I said that’s how I would choose to learn if I was going to start over. And that’s because, for me, what I’ve gotten the most benefit from and what has produced the strongest impact with real people are the ideas that were borne out of taking a good trick and trying to come up with an intriguing premise for it. Not just learning the best/newest thing.

And I disagree with your premise: “young magicians now are so much better than they’ve ever been before.” I think that peaked around 15 years ago.

Around 10-20 years ago you had a lot of magicians in their later-teens to mid-20s creating stuff that felt like it was really coming from a fresh perspective. People like Danny Garcia, Calen Morelli, Blake Vogt, Marcus Eddie, Peter Turner.

I think that group came of age with the internet, so they had access to more information than preceding generations. But their formative years were pre-social media. I think social media has distracted and dulled the average young magician. Chasing views doesn’t lead to creating interesting new methods or approaches to performing.

But I’m happy to be proven wrong on this. Who’s in the 18–25 range who is creating a repertoire of strong material that I’m missing?

Looking at your Aug 11 Post, Dirtying the Bill Production, I wanted to share with you a little something I use that may fit the bill (heh) for spectator involvement.  While not a bill production, per se, it does introduce the idea of money appearing.  

So, here's what I do....it costs me a dollar whenever I do this, but I think it's worth it.  Get some $2 bills from the bank. Prepare them ala Chad Long's Scratch effect.  I typically print a stacker to go under neat the scratcher that says You WIN $1"

Now if you're in a situation where you can borrow a single, you explain this new promotion from the local state lottery.  Pull out an unused scratcher sticker and place it on their folded dollar bill.

Do the necessary thing....then slide the bill over to them with a coin to scratch off the scratcher.  

"You WIN $1" will be revealed.  Have them unfold the bill, which is now a two dollar bill.  They won one dollar.

Not sure if that actually fits your concept...but it does get the spectator involved more.—JS

I like that quite a bit. I mean, it’s not eye-poppingly magical. It doesn’t have the visual element of a bill production or bill change. But it feels almost like a mini-Carbonaro Effect moment.

I'm currently performing two of my solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. One is called Fake and is a show about art and forgery based on an old Orson Welles film. The other is called Heist and is pretty much directly inspired by your "live life like a heist movie" post from a few years ago. So thanks for that. 

Anyway, in the evenings I've been guesting in a show called The Big Naked Variety Show where the gimmick is all the performers are entirely naked. There's a stand-up who hosts it, a circus girl who does a wicked hula hoop act, a contortionist who does a killer routine (that also involves producing a real banana from inside herself) then also me. 

I mostly do stand up with a few silly tricks thrown in but something that I genuinely do is just a classic presentation of the invisible deck. You know, throw a pack of invisible cards out, they choose one, reverse it, box it and throw it back to you. When it lands in your hands it "becomes visible". Except I have no pockets or sleeves to produce it from so I genuinely use the "prison pocket" technique. I clench an invisible deck between my butt cheeks during the whole bit then in an opportune moment I retrieve it, hold it against my body, palm it, then produce it. 

It honestly kills. 

I sort of hint that the only way it could be done is if I had genuine magic powers or it was up my butt but stop short of fully revealing it as I think it's funnier that way. 

Anyway, there's my rather unusual and possibly embarrassing admittance that I'm actually secretly quite proud of. 

If you have any other suggestions for tricks or routines that you think would be impressive to perform completely naked, I'd love to hear them.—CC

Come out on stage blowing a big gum bubble. Let it pop, then clearly swallow it.

“They say it sits in your stomach for 7 years, but I don’t believe that. I swallow gum all the time.”

Then wriggle your ass a little like something is annoying you. Reach up into your butthole with a thumbtip loaded with a bubble gum mouth coil and start pulling it out, foot by foot. Scream like it hurts.

When you’re done say, “That’s it. No more gum for me. It’s back to cigarettes.”

Get a cigarette, light it, then push the lit cigarette into your asshole (in the thumbtip you left there when you pulled out the mouth coil). Then use a smoke from mouth gimmick to make it look like you’re smoking the cigarette through your butt.

Then collect your Best of the Festival award.

Dustings #149

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I’m sure the new daughter-in-law was thrilled.

“How foolish of me to think the focus would be on us and the magic of our love, when your father has a stack of Rubik’s Cube cards set up for the Out to Lunch principle.”

You might say, “Oh, Andy. They probably asked him to perform.”

Nope. He states it pretty clearly: he’s going to perform if he gets the urge.

By the way, this picture is pretty much the exact opposite of the Carefree Philosophy in action. Imagine loading yourself up with SEVEN different packs and stacks of cards to attend your son’s wedding. Surely one deck and a little impromptu material could have been enough to embarrass yourself, yes?

I pray you weren’t the best man.

The priest: “May I have the rings, please?”

You: “Aww… hmm. Shit. They’re here somewhere. Is this it? No, that’s a rubber band. I remember taking them out of my jacket to make room for Cinemental, which many people consider a blockbuster two-phase mentalism routine that will leave your spectators begging for a sequel. They’re here somewhere. If not, they’re in the room. Yeah. They’re probably in the room. I’ll grab them later when I go get my Fart-Toon deck.”

On the Mountebank thread the Magic Cafe we have someone making this point a couple of times:

Here’s a tighter version that keeps the bite but makes the argument flow a little cleaner:

Now, I can’t comment on Mountebank because I don’t own it, although I’ll probably pick it up at some point.

But what I can comment on is putting a business card in your wallet.

Let me put your mind at ease: it isn’t “illogical.” It doesn’t “scream oddness.” There are basically two things people do with business cards, and one of them is put them in their wallet. Only a magician could convince himself that putting a card back where it came from is some glaring breach of normal human behavior.

I spent 500 days testing peek wallets and breaking down every part of the process with spectators. This was never an issue.

Treat writing down the word, putting the card away in the wallet, and then putting the wallet away as nothing more than laying the groundwork for the interesting thing you’re about to get to.

“We’ll get back to that later if we need it.”

You’re simply establishing a target—a word, image, number, whatever—then getting it out of the way so you can move on to the good stuff. That’s all. It’s perfectly reasonable.

This is actually a great book for the beginning ventriloquist. It teaches you how to make… that thing, and then hands you an immediate reason to drill your labials—because the only thing that will make sense coming out of that dummy’s mouth is “Please kill me.”

“Tleaze kill ne.”

How To Get the Best of Everything (But Mainly Pizza)

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Hey fatties, here's a little tip for you on how to get the best slice of pizza when you visit a local pizza joint.

There's one near me that I hit a couple of times a week for lunch. In the summer, the counter is usually run by high schoolers or college kids home on break. If you're good-natured and a decent tipper, they'll usually hook you up. I see them spin the pie around looking for the biggest slice for me.

And I encourage this behavior by letting them know I noticed.

"Damn. That's a good-looking slice."

"Ooh. That's a fat boy. Thanks for hooking me up."

And what happens from there? A positive feedback loop. They come through for me and I acknowledge it. They get a little dopamine hit for being appreciated. They're nicer to me the next time I visit and around it goes.

They have a character to play now. They've gone out of their way to come off as fun and generous and I've recognized that, so they want to continue to live up to that.

But eventually I realized something.

You don't actually have to wait for them to hook you up first.

I've started doing this with people I've never met, in places I've never been, before they've shown me the slightest bit of generosity.

Back to the pizza shop, there's one middle-aged woman who works the counter and has never seemed to be charmed by me in any way. When I ask for a slice, she just gives me the next one in line. Sometimes it's fine. Sometimes it's rinky-dink.

You'd assume most slices would be the same, but they've got at least one spazz working there who doesn't seem to cut the pies like he's aiming for symmetry, but more like he's trying to teach the parts of a circle.

Sometimes you benefit from this. Other times it's, “Here's your secant,” and you're handed some weird sliver of pizza.

Well, one day I walked into the place, saw this woman behind the counter, and saw the next slice was likely to be a piece that was half the size it should be.

In that moment I decided to pretend this woman has always hooked me up.

"Ah, I'm so glad you're behind the counter today," I say smiling. "You always get me the best slice."

Now, I don't know what she was thinking at this point. If I had to guess, she probably thought I had gotten some good slices randomly in the past and that I had assumed she was taking care of me. When really it was just random.

But whatever she thought, she smiled back, rotated the pizza around, and grabbed me the biggest slice.

And she's done that every time since.

I gave her a role and she stepped right into it. It made her happy and it made me happy.

And everyone does it. I use this all the time.

At the ice cream shop: "I'll take a peanut-butter cup flurry. I'm glad I got you. You never skimp on the candy pieces."

At a hotel: "Oh, I lucked out with you behind the counter. I checked in a few months ago and you scored me the best room." (But what if she wasn’t there a few months ago. What if she just started working there? No worries. What’s the worst she’ll think? I mistook him for someone else? Now she’s in competition with this other imaginary person to take care of me.)

Even with magic: "You want to see a trick? Sure, I'd love to show you something. Your reactions are always so good.”

You may say this is manipulative. But it's not. I mean, yes, technically speaking maybe. But getting extra mix-ins at the ice cream parlor isn't the same as strong-arming a widow into giving you her retirement fund.

People like to be noticed and acknowledged. All I'm doing is noticing and acknowledging a good quality in them before they've actually demonstrated it.

And people have a tendency to live up to the version of themselves you've already decided they are.

Un-Etch-A-Sketch

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Here's another trick you can do with the Jerx App. For those of you who own it, you'll understand what's going on without me having to explain too much. If you don’t, you can skip this post.

This is good for a small gathering, ideally like 3-8 people I'd say.

At some point in the evening you ask someone, "Can I try something with you? Do you have good intuition? Yeah. I thought you might. You have that kind of energy. I want to try something that involves putting a thought in someone's mind and then removing it. There are some people who can do this with almost anyone, but I'm just learning and I need a particularly intuitive person who's sensitive to this sort of thing."

You split people up so the person who's helping you is one side of the room and everyone else is on the other. (We'll call that the "stage" and the "audience.")

From the "stage" you ask your friend to look around the room and let their mind settle on an object they can draw in about 30 seconds. "It doesn't have to be perfect, just something recognizable. Don't stare at it too long as you look around. I don't want to be able to guess what it is you're going to draw."

As she does this, you go over to the audience and gather them around and tell them the thought you're trying to implant in her mind is the guitar. You also ask one of the people there to pull out their phone and record the interaction.

You go back to your friend and give her your phone open to the notepad app and ask her to draw whatever it is she's thinking of.

As she does, you look over her shoulder to see if she's on the right track.

"Interesting," you say, noncommittally.

You walk over to the audience side, and tell them not to react one way or the other because you don't want her to know if she got it right just yet. You have her show the drawing to everyone and it's a guitar.

You tell her to turn the phone back to herself and stare at her drawing, burning all the details into her mind.

You then have her close her eyes and you have a member of the audience tell you to stop as you sweep your finger around the room. Let's say you end up pointing to an exercise bike.

"Okay, that's what I'm going to go for."

You have the person on stage open her eyes and stare into yours. "Don't break eye contact with me. Just let your eyes take in mine. Try to forget anything else in the room. Forget those people over there. Actually, keep your eyes locked on mine and turn with me."

Put your hands on her shoulders and turn her back to the audience.

You hold eye contact for a bit. "Okay, without looking, what did you draw?"

"An exercise bike," she says. Even though an exercise bike was just randomly chosen and everyone saw she drew a guitar.

"You didn't draw a guitar?" you ask.

"No."

"Take a look," you say.

She looks at her drawing and sees it's a guitar.

The audience confirms that's what she drew originally and the exercise bike was just chosen and (apparently) somehow swapped for the actual memory in her head.

She can watch the video if she's unconvinced.

Notes

I think the method is clear for those of you with the app. You can re-read the description to get the actual choreography that makes it work.

As it's written above is the only way I've performed it. It wasn't a trick that was 100% my style so I only did it a few times. As I write it up now, I think it might be better not to "predict" her original drawing. I think that's a clearer narrative. The person draws whatever she wants and you are able to "swap" that memory for something else.

That might make more sense than you predicting her original drawing and then changing her memory later.

You don't have to force the final option (exercise bike above). You could just say, "I'll make her think she drew…hmm… the exercise bike." But I think it's much stronger if it seems like a selection that was made randomly.

I don't love a pointing/timing force, but I'm not sure what would be better here. To give yourself more leeway on the force, sweep your pointing finger from left to right, leading up to the force object, but also move it in an infinity symbol pattern (or any kind of back and forth pattern) as you do. This makes it relatively easy to end up near the force object.

[This was inspired by an email I got a few years ago from Demian Max suggesting a Jerx App based version of Brandon Queen's Lacuna. While I liked the idea, I didn't love that the handwriting of the name they "forgot" wouldn't match their handwriting. And you couldn't force the swapped in memory. You just had to name a name.]

Dirtying the Bill Production

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Do you take requests? I'd love your take on the BH bill production and if you would be able to incorporate that into your carefree style. 

My current method is to buy something or at a restaurant, pretend I forgot my wallet and then produce enough bills to pay for it, leaving the extra as a tip. I've not been able to make it more spectator focused though. 

Would love to hear your thoughts.—AM

Yeah, I don't know that producing money is ever going to really feel "spectator focused" exactly. The closest you can get is producing a quarter from someone's ear, which isn't very impressive. And I don't know how you'd extend that for a bill production. (Spread their buttcheeks like you're opening a wallet and pull out a $20?)

The other problem with tricks like these is that they're so straightforward as far as the magic premise is concerned that it's almost impossible to make the method clean enough to live up to the premise.

"I can pull money from the air."

Great! So let's see your clearly empty hands, front and back, and then slowly pull money from the air.

You can't do that, of course, and that's the issue. People have an idea of what pulling money from the air should look like. And what you're doing doesn't live up to that idea.

It's like mindreading. People have an idea of what mindreading should look like: "I think of something, and you tell me what it is." They don't expect billets and writing and clipboards and wallets.

So you need to dirty up the premise some. If you frame tricks like this as "mindreading" or "pulling money from the air," they will never live up to expectations.

Here's an idea, but it's just an example of dirtying the premise.

You pull out a 2-inch brown square of thin leather or calfskin.

"Have you seen one of these?" you ask and hand it out.

You then explain that it's a new ultra-minimalist wallet out of Japan—something like a compressed fiber leather—treated with a process that bonds the cotton fibers in paper. “Or something like that.”

Now you sort of rub the square of fabric between your fingertips and extract bills out of it.

I don't know exactly how that would look with this method, but you get the idea. (It might look better with this one, exchanging the single bill for the “wallet”)

We've taken a premise that you can pretty much only fail to live up to and turned it into a premise they have no conception of. What does it look like to pull money from an ultra-minimalist wallet. Nobody knows.

And we’ve shifted the focus off what you can do and placed it on this strange little object, which is a much easier sell than, "I can pull money from the air.” Which can only make people wonder why you dress like such a slob.

Mailbag #178

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Weren't you looking for a memorized deck a few years back? Did you end up deciding on one or did you bail on that idea? I'm trying to decide if it's worth the time investment. —TC

A little bit of both, actually. A couple years ago I memorized Mnemonica and I tried working with it for a few months but I ended up giving up on it. Not because it was too difficult, but it just didn't fit in with my philosophy on magic that was developing at that time—the Carefree Philosophy.

While I think it's a powerful tool for the professional performer, I feel it's more limiting for the amateur.

  1. The deck can't be borrowed.

  2. The deck can't be shuffled by the participant—or even just handled casually.

  3. You're limited in the tricks you can do without affecting the stack.

  4. A lot of stacked deck tricks feel very similar to me.

  5. Improvisation is constrained.

Many would argue with that last point. They'd say that a memorized deck opens up a world of improvisation. "Jazzing" they call it. Because, I guess—like jazz—it's frequently terrible.

Jazzing is primarily about locating named cards in the deck. I think magicians may overestimate the entertainment value/impossibility of locating cards in a deck no one else is allowed to shuffle.

When I say "improvisation is constrained," I mean in the sense that if you want to maintain your stack, you're limited to stack tricks. And in my experience, there tends to be a few great tricks you'll want to do… and then a bunch of other tricks you can do with a stack but that you wouldn't bother doing otherwise.

The Carefree Approach is: Let's borrow a deck, have it shuffled, and still have a library of dozens of tricks I'd want to do in that situation—and pick the right one for the vibe, their interests, etc.

When I was carrying around a memorized deck, my feeling was, "Well, might as well use this weapon given that I have it with me." And since I was going to use it, I might as well do one of the few great tricks rather than the many just "decent" tricks.

So for me it was more limiting than freeing.

I still run through the deck in my head once a week to keep it fresh. And I still have a deck stacked with my collection of decks, should I ever want to use it on the spur of the moment when I'm home. But it didn't end up being a tool that was far and away worth the effort. If you think it would be a fun exercise to memorize a deck, go for it. But I think it actually opens fewer performance doors than you'd imagine.

I feel you don’t write too much about billet switches. Do you have a go-to switch you use or a billet trick you use regularly? —CC

I don’t do a ton of billet work, so I don’t have a big arsenal of billet switches. My go-to switch is a tabled switch: Billet folded in quarters on the table. Billet to be switched in in finger-palm. In the process of picking up the billet and handing it to someone, you lap the tabled billet and bring the other one into play.

My favorite use for this switch is at dinner at a larger table. You get everyone’s attention, write something on a business card, fold it up, set the pencil down, then announce yoou’re going to play a game of word association. You whisper a word into the ear of the person to your left, they choose a word it makes them think of and and they whisper that word into the ear of the person on their left, and so on. The final person reveals what word they’re thinking of.

You have a pre-folded and unfolded billet in your lap with a small pencil and here’s wher you do the dirty work. You have everyone state their word out loud, so now we see how the word evolved around the table. As this happens, you’re writing the final word in your lap and refolding the billet with on hand. Then you do the switch as you pick the billet up.

I hold the billet up and askwho the most “trustworthy” person in the goup is and then pass it to them.



Dustings #148

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Okay everyone, I appreciate you thinking of me when you see things like this, but you can stop writing me.

Yes, I know David Penn has a trick out called Digital Penetration.

I already made a joke about it four months ago.

If there’s a low-hanging joke about finger-blasting, you can be quite certain I’ve already gotten to it.

Well, magic’s greatest mind is at it again. Here’s a new genius routine I’ve come up with for you.

Next time you’re hanging out with someone and they’re like, “What should we do tonight?” You casually suggest: “Hmmm, we could go to the P3 Magic Theater [Penguin’s theater in Columbus Ohio] or we could maybe just stay in and watch the Matthew Leblanc baseball-playing-monkey movie, Ed.”

It’s even better if you can subtly influence your friend to name these two options (Using NLP, Wonder Words, etc.)

Either way, you then tell them: “I’ll let you pick, But I already know what you’re going to choose. In fact, I have a sticker that predicts it right here.” You bring out a small envelope with “Prediction” written on it.

Allow them to choose and give them a chance to change their mind.

Whatever they choose, slide your prediction from the envelope showing a bang-on prediction and nothing else in the envelope.

Peel the back off the sticker and stick it to your forehead. This will remind people of the incredible feat you just achieved. And it will cement the orientation of the sticker in place so no one will notice the brilliant deception Penguin built into their logo all those years ago. (Not that anyone is likely to spot it unless they’re like a real smart doctor or something.)

Hmmmm….